National and international background for the research project

The proposed destination offers the potential to activate a multi-annual project. An ethno-archaeological study like the one outlined above has not been carried out before in the region, but it is anticipated that the study will take the research in this field an important step forward. Inspiration can however be sought from some pioneering Danish efforts in New Guinea itself (Steensberg 1973; Højlund 1981) and recent initiatives in other areas (Hodder 1982; David & Kramer 2001). Danish archaeology has not carried out excavation activities in Melanesia before. However, Ton Otto’s many years of anthropological research activities in the province of Manus in Papua New Guinea provide a breeding ground for an extraordinary new contribution, whereby existing anthropological knowledge will be brought into play along with new anthropological and ethno-archaeological initiatives. In recent years, Australian archaeologists from Australian National University (ANU: especially Matthew Spriggs, Wal Ambrose, Glenn Summerhayes and Jean Kennedy) have produced decisive new knowledge about the enigmatic Lapita culture, which is now connected with the spread of agriculture and Proto-Oceanic languages in Oceania.

                      In the late summer of 2004, Moesgaard Museum brought into focus the ancient tradition of building outrigger canoes in a research and dissemination project that involved visiting a group of canoe builders from Manus (http://www.moesmus.dk/kanu/kanu.php). The ethnographer Steffen Dalsgaard has written an MA thesis[1] on the tradition of canoeing (and has just begun a three-year PhD scholarship), while the archaeologists involved, Mads Ravn and myself, have considerable knowledge of past globalization, the archaeology of the area, and modern field methods. The ethnographer Rane Willerslev is a specialist in visual and material anthropology and will be responsible for the dissemination aspect of the project, in particular video documentation.

                      The project is part of a major research programme supported by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities and the University of Aarhus and entitled “Material Culture and Identity Formation: Globalization in the past and present”, with the collaboration of Moesgaard Museum, Papua New Guinea National Museum in Port Moresby and ANU in Canberra. With this pilot project on Mbuke our primary aim is to lay the foundation for a larger research project in Manus/PNG with the help of the above-mentioned collaborators and with focus on the themes of globalization, identity and material culture. It is thus expected that the results of the pilot study on Mbuke will be of decisive significance for the direction that future research in this field will take.

                      The international collaboration began already on September 17^th 2005, when Professor Matthew Spriggs (ANU) visited the University of Aarhus. On the agenda was a future joint project involving the training of Danish, Australian and Papua New Guinean doctoral students as well as the establishment of Post-doc scholarships. It should also be mentioned that we have been in close contact with curator Nick Araho of the PNG National Museum, and that local assistants will be used for the archaeological fieldwork. The project also aims to strengthen the existing contacts with other institutions and researchers with activities in the region: Professor Chris Gosden, School of Archaeology and the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University and Professor Graeme Barker, McDonald Institute of Archaeology, Cambridge University.

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